Chapter 69 — The Talisman Painter Who Guards the Village

Cracks Spread Widely

That night, Diệp Sương was startled awake in the middle of the third shift by a slight underground vibration, a familiar vibration that she had felt many times in her life - the first time at the age of thirteen in Tùng Lĩnh Village, the next time at Vân Tiêu Peak at the age of sixteen - but this time, its intensity made her whole body cold.

She rushed out of the tent, seeing Miên Trà and several other Vụ Ẩn warriors also standing outside, their faces full of panic, their glowing eyes blinking irregularly as if reacting to some chaotic energy spreading throughout the air.

"Can you feel it?" Miên Trà asked, her voice trembling. "The whole forest... it was shaking, as if in pain."

*

Lãnh Vũ arrived shortly after, his usual mature appearance now carrying a rare tension. "I have lived for many generations," he said, his voice heavy, "but I have never felt such a widespread and synchronized change. This is not just a matter of Thâm Vụ Forest anymore."

"What do you mean?" Diệp Sương asked, her heart beating faster.

"I can feel this vibration spreading much farther than the range of my clan's senses can usually reach," Lãnh Vũ replied, his eyes looking far into the dark horizon. "It was as if the entire underground network of Linh Mạch, in every direction, was ringing a warning bell at the same time."

*

Three days later, the first news began to pour into Rễ Bàng Hamlet through panicked merchants fleeing by - not only from the Thâm Vụ Forest, but from all over. A trading group recounted the scene of the land cracking near Lam Thủy Town, causing an entire market to disperse in panic. Another person told of unusual groups of demons appearing near the northern border, where major fluctuations had never been recorded before.

"It's like the whole of Cửu Vân is having a fever at the same time," Mr. Bay Nhah said, his voice heavy when hearing all that news, his trembling hand pouring more tea for Diệp Sương who was sitting thoughtfully at the table.

Diệp Sương did not answer immediately, simply sitting quietly and looking at the old map spread out in front of her, holding a charcoal pen in her hand to mark every unusual point she could hear about. The number of markers had tripled in just three days compared with what she had known before.

*

"What do you think this is?" Miên Trà asked, sitting next to her, looking worriedly at the map filled with small exclamation marks.

"I think," Diệp Sương replied slowly, her voice heavy, "what Thanh Việt and I discovered at Tiêu Sa Pass, what your clan discovered in Thâm Vụ Forest - are not two separate incidents. They are small wounds on the same body, and now, perhaps, all of those wounds are bursting at the same time."

He remembered the vague warning in the letter Âu Bội Nhi sent many weeks ago, about the protective battlefield around Vân Tiêu Peak that had been unusually damaged since he was sixteen years old. If the Linh Mạch was a tightly interconnected network, as Tạ Vân Khê had once explained in class, then over-exploitation at many points over many years would eventually reach a day when the entire network could no longer endure it.

*

Another trader, who stopped to rest temporarily in Rễ Bàng Hamlet the next night, recounted in more detail the scene near Lam Thủy Town that he witnessed before fleeing - large cracks tearing up the market street, heat rising from the ground as if something was boiling below, and an entire corner of the busy commercial street had to be evacuated at night for fear of the ground collapsing.

"Trấn Lam Thủy has never had anything like this before," he said, his voice still shaking with fear. "That is the busiest commercial place in this area, near the big mountain, near the sect, everyone thinks that place is the safest. But now..."

When Diệp Sương heard that, her heart suddenly tightened. Lam Thủy Town—Âu Bội Nhi's hometown, which Cố Thanh Việt had also visited many times as an outer-sect disciple. If even that place was no longer safe, then clearly, the disaster was much closer than anyone had initially imagined.

*

Lãnh Vũ convened all the elders of the Vụ Ẩn clan the next night, a rare emergency meeting that Diệp Sương, along with Mr. Bảy Nhánh and several representatives of the Rễ Bàng Hamlet, were invited to attend — an unprecedented gesture in the history of this clan.

"I believe," Lãnh Vũ said before the entire council of elders, his voice ringing with seriousness, "we are facing a demon tide of a scale not seen in many generations, possibly larger than anything my ancestors have ever recorded. If I am right, no single race, no small alliance, can withstand it alone."

The elder, who had opposed the alliance with humans before, now sat silently, her face no longer holding the familiar tough look, leaving only a deep anxiety no less than anyone in the room.

*

"So what are you going to do?" another elder asked, his voice filled with confusion.

Lãnh Vũ turned to look at Diệp Sương, his eyes carried a trust that had been built over weeks of witnessing. "I think it's time for a voice that can reach places our clan cannot reach — to the sect, to the court, to warn of the true scale of this danger, before it's too late."

The whole room was silent, all eyes focused on Diệp Sương. She immediately understood what Lãnh Vũ was implying, and a cold feeling spread through her body: she would return to the place from which she had been banished and face the people who had condemned her—not to reclaim justice for herself, but to save those who did not believe in her.

*

"I'm not sure they will listen to me," Diệp Sương said, her voice was quiet but could not hide her trembling. "You are a banished person. Your warning, in their eyes, is no different from the words of a traitor trying to find a way to atone for his crimes."

"But you're not alone anymore," Lãnh Vũ replied, his voice firm. "You can bring evidence - the wooden survey stakes, the testimony of my clan, of the Rễ Bàng Hamlet, of everyone who has witnessed this danger with their own eyes. That is the kind of power that you alone in the past, standing in front of the council of elders, did not have."

Diệp Sương was silent for a long time, looking down at her calloused hands and recalling every face that had trusted her throughout the journey—a list longer than she had dared to dream of during the darkest days after that fateful trial.

*

"Okay," he said finally, his voice regaining certainty. "I will come back. Not to beg them to forgive me, but to force them to face the truth they have deliberately avoided for so long."

Miên Trà held his hand tightly, her eyes both worried and full of determination. "I will go with you. Clan leader, I would like to be the messenger representing my clan on this trip."

Lãnh Vũ looked at his young nephew for a long time, his eyes full of contradictions between the worry of an older person and pride at that unexpected maturity, and finally nodded. "Du Khinh will go with you two, to protect and also to be an official witness of our clan before those who have never believed in our existence."

*

On the last night before leaving, Diệp Sương stood alone on the bank of the stream where she had first met Miên Trà, looking at the sparkling water under the moonlight, her heart trembling yet determined. She took out an old inkstone, sharpened a little ink, and drew a simple An Mien leaf on a piece of bark—not to calm her fear, but to remind herself where everything had begun and why she had chosen to draw charms to heal rather than merely fight.

The gentle light from the drawing spread in the darkness, and in that moment, he suddenly realized: the journey ahead, although full of unprecedented dangers, was also the journey he had prepared for his whole life, since his trembling hand first held the pen next to the fire in Tùng Lĩnh Village, not knowing that one day, those ink strokes would have to shoulder such a great responsibility.

She put the piece of tree bark in her chest, next to the dotted map, stood up, brushed the dust from her shirt, then looked up at the sparse starry night sky, took a deep breath before returning to the tent, preparing for the long journey ahead starting the next morning.